The UK response to Covid-19 [MOD WARNING 1ST POST]

Aegir wrote: »

https://www.itv.com/news/2020-03-29/michael-gove-admits-communication-confusion-over-eu-ventilator-scheme-mix-up/

When did Gove say there would be no issues with PPE?[/QUOTE]

He isn't going to admit that, but that was the context of the question about the EU procurement was being asked. Hospitals were crying out for PPE, the government were claiming they were doing their best, and then the fact they had refused to join a EU procurement program came to light. He said they could handle it, as an independent nation. If you are having issues, do you refuse help and say you can deal it yourself and then blame others?

This was a clear opportunity for them to get additional items, which clearly they needed. But they refused. His line about not needing their help is of course a lie, since previously they tried to claim they hadn't received the e-mail so didn't even know about it.

So we are faced with a government knowingly lying and then claiming that it didn't need help, then failing and your only thing is to say that other countries struggled as well?

Professor Moriarty wrote: »

This Tory government is now being disingenuous about its testing targets:

The government has changed the way it is counting the number of Covid-19 tests carried out, in a bid to hit its self-imposed 100,000 tests per day target, the Health Service Journal reports. Previously, a test would be counted once the sample had been processed in a lab, but this definition has been changed in the last few days, a senior source has told the HSJ. According to the source, the Department of Health and Social Care is now including tests that have been posted or delivered to people’s home in its figures – which means tests that are sent to people are counted before the recipient has done their test and returned their sample to the lab.

They'll reach the 100,000 today anyway, that's all that matters to some people. They dont ask a lot of questions about how these things are achieved.

Yesterday they tested 54,000 people. Over 35% of the overall total were retests. That is a lot.

Testing 50-60,000 a day is a good number all the same. It is strictly only where they should have been weeks ago, but better late than never as the saying goes.

AllForIt wrote: »

The don't necessarily have to care about British people to have an opinion.

If it's not about who's right and who's wrong then I don't know what it about.

You don't sound very genuine to me.

Despite the above, I appreciate your constructive engagement of the substantive issues.

The extra deaths are due to coronavirus of course?! Negligence isn't really the same as 'willing to let old people die'. I thought old people were their greatest Brexit supporters so why would they shoot themselves in the foot. It seems to me when you consider the criticisms in their entirety they are often contradictory, indicating a tactic that if if you throw enough of them some of them might stick.

As to the numbers. Considering that the country has been in effective lockdown which reduces the incidences of traffic accidents and many other kinds of fatalities I would say that to only count the excess as attributable to the pandemic could still very well be under counting the numbers.

Rather than saying due to coronavirus, I would say due to the pandemic and this government's failures in that regard. There are doubtless many people that would have survived but for the scale of the pandemic in the UK which is down to this government's failure to act appropriately at the outset.

Perhaps you have missed it but it has been brought up numerous times that the attitude of letting old people die is exactly what Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson's right-hand man, has been quoted by the Sunday Times in the UK as having said. Their actions subsequently certainly seem to be in line with this attitude. Of course, they're never going to admit this publicly because that is gentricide. We can only judge them by their actions which in this matter have been quite damning.

As to their reasoning. We can only speculate. Considering that their economy is expected to be strongly negatively impacted by Brexit they might have considered it preferable to sacrifice the elderly than taking any actions that might be detrimental to their economic outlook. Further, they might have seen it as an opportunity to reduce the financial burden on the state. It can be argued that this also feeds into their small state, low or no effective corporate tax ideology. There've also been numerous instances that indicate that Dominic Cummings is a eugenicist at heart. Of course, the only way we would know for sure would be if there was a proper independent international investigation but the people in power will certainly never allow this to happen.

Why don't these amazing journalist's make this point at the briefings? If it is so easy to get the true figures by using simple math then why are the gov trying to downplay figures when they can be so easily caught out.

If you are saying that there has been a lack of journalistic oversight and accountability of this administration and of the Tory administration over the last 10 years, in the British press, then I would certainly agree. Further, we have seen evidence of this government's hostility to journalistic accountability in the way that they have refused to engage with critical press and systematically neutered the BBC over the past 10 years.

I find it completely shocking to see even this level of journalistic scrutiny of this government from the right-wing press considering that they had been given a free pass and for the past 10 years. For even the right wing press to be this critical, suggests the scale and intensity of this government's negligence/wrong-doing.

The government are trying to downplay the figures to simply avoid any real accountability. No matter how obvious their lie they can stand behind it and claim only the official number. Who is going to hold him accountable when they are in power?

Right now, the debate centers on what the actual number is rather than how 20,000+ elderly people have been allowed to perish in this manner. Which is precisely the intent of this administration.

There has been difficulty is sourcing PPE because every country on the planet want's them at the same time. Because they couldn't get them does not mean there was absolute no plan. You could argue there plan wasn't good enough but you can't say they had no plan.

What exactly was this mythical plan? Medics speaking out about the lack of PPE were threatened with adverse consequences for their careers. This government repeatedly lied about PPE continuing to claim throughout that this was adequate even as doctors, nurses, care staff and nursing homes were shouting themselves hoarse that they were being left utterly exposed. For you to pivot to this idea of there being a difficulty sourcing them is not an argument this government was making when they were saying that they had enough and that it was only a matter of logistics, ferrying it around the country, which was clearly a lie.

Further, how many doctors and elderly have lost their lives in all these other countries that you are talking about? And now we are back again to the question of numbers and the motivation for this government to obfuscate them.

It is a convenient get out to say that PPE is in demand throughout. And while this is true there is a stark difference in the scale of damage in many different countries. Again, how many doctors have died in Germany, Norway, Denmark, Ireland, Canada? I would be surprised if the total number of medics having lost their lives in all of these countries is greater than what has happened in the UK alone.

I will ask again, what was this government's plan to protect the elderly population during this pandemic? When was this plan implemented? Beyond simply words. Why are there 20,000+ elderly people dead in care homes in the UK? Why are these numbers not being replicated everywhere else in the world?

Yes, overall, there have been failings in many other countries when it comes to protecting the elderly during this pandemic. But what has happened in the UK is of a scale that is not being seen elsewhere other than a handful of countries and countries in the developing world like Brazil where the leadership has simply refused to acknowledge the problem even exists.

Germany does not have a healthcare system comparable to the UK. For starters.

This is an incredibly weak argument. The conservative party have been in power for the past 10 years. They are also refusing to publish the pandemic plan that was prepared in 2016. Most likely this would lay bare their extreme negligence in the matter. This again continues a pattern of lies, distortion and suppression of information that might be used to hold them accountable.

I know how left wingers would react to it and that would be shur it was the governments fault not investing enough in deradicalization, taking focus off the terrorists, in exactly the same way you're taking focus off the virus for all the deaths and blaming all the deaths on the government.

Considering the government's approach, does not preclude prosecuting terrorists. I would very much want anyone responsible for this scale of death to be held accountable. I would not agree with demonizing and profiling an entire section of the population or religion because of the actions of a small minority. Just as I would not be asking for Tory voters to be profiled or punished for the actions of Boris Johnson and his administration. Again, the willingness to turn a blind eye to what this administration has done is something I cannot understand. Regardless of anybody's politics. I would be equally critical if this were labor or any other party. For example, I believe Tony Blair is a war criminal who belongs behind bars even though I had been a big supporter of his administration initially.

The UK only left the EU 3 months ago. I don't see being part of the EU did anything to alleviate the effects of a pandemic.

Well, this administration spurned every opportunity to cooperate with the EU in procuring ventilators, PPE etc. It's impossible to know how much this could have mitigated the situation but I would suspect that bargaining as a block of 500 million people gives you greater leverage in trying to procure PPE than trying to go it alone.

I have to say I found the whole tone of your post to have a superior attitude to it and you hardly made a single unique point for all the text.

I sincerely apologize for any condescension in my tone or impression of a superior attitude. Thank you once more for your substantive engagement.

CelticRambler wrote: »

Jeeez, that's really stretching the justification of incompetence to the max. When we order boxes of gloves, gowns, aprons, masks, whatever, we order boxes; and when we count our stock, we count boxes; and when we give it out to staff members, we give out boxes.

Only the most autistic bean-counter, scraping the very bottom of the barrel of penny-saving excuses counts individual gloves. Depending on what I'm doing on any particular day, I could go through a box of 100 gloves in a morning ... and I have a reputation in my workplace(s) for being extremely frugal.

I knew there was Cavan or Derry blood in you.

robinph wrote: »

How is providing the numbers of items being sourced trying to hide things?

You can't be this guilable?

You think that they provided the numbers because they wanted to or that the numbers they did provide were accurate?

Why do yu think they went 6 weeks not publishing the true death figures? Because it was hard to calculate? Come on, they needed to keep the number down as long as possible to avoid questions. Then immediately be able to claim that the numbers were reducing so, yeah sure, we lied about the numbers, but things are getting better so lets forget about the last and look to the future.

theological wrote: »

It is the UK response thread, but it is also important that the criticism is reasonable. If for example several countries right across Europe have struggled with the supply and distribution of PPE that's relevant to this discussion. If other countries have struggled with the spread of the virus in care homes that is relevant to the discussion.


The sad reality is that the UK has basically followed the same trajectory of large European countries with the exception of Germany which has done phenomenally well.

Other countries didn't lie about refusing help though with an ever changing story as the lies got exposed.

That's relevant to the discussion, yet bringing it up means we have to go through rounds of whataboutery and straw men and tangential rubbish because it hurts our resident Brits' feelings.

And on and on and on and Ariston...

Leroy42 wrote: »

Because you have to ask yourself why? WHy would the change the usual way of counting these types of items?

Would it be more advantageous to talk about single gloves rather than pairs, given that people need two gloves.

I will admit to having missed whatever it was in the wider world that sent people off this particular tangent, but there's only one circumstance that I know of in which anyone in healthcare would spare a fraction of a second to think about the number of gloves in a box, and that's when the intern or work-experience student is told to order "a hundred" and orders one box of 100 instead of one hundred boxes. That happens from time to time.

Honestly, it is utterly ridiculous to be arguing over whether a government response was appropriate or not based on whether someone uses one glove or two. They are not fashion items, they are not worn in pairs, and nobody gives a damn about them as long as they're within reach when you need them and they fit properly. Whoever's trawling through those spread sheets looking for that kind of error would be better off signing up for the team of contact tracers.

In the grand scheme of things, I'm not that bothered by the fact that tests being sent out are being included in the daily figure. Does it paint a slightly better picture in terms of meeting this arbitrary goal? I guess so, but they have to be counted at some stage. Prior to home tests were tests only included in this number once complete or when administered I wonder?

I just hope that they are not sending out ~50,000 home tests a day with the ability to only process ~5,000 of them when they start arriving, then I'll get a bit more outraged.

S.M.B. wrote: »

In the grand scheme of things, I'm not that bothered by the fact that tests being sent out are being included in the daily figure. Does it paint a slightly better picture in terms of meeting this arbitrary goal? I guess so, but they have to be counted at some stage. Prior to home tests were tests only included in this number once complete or when administered I wonder?

I just hope that they are not sending out ~50,000 home tests a day with the ability to only process ~5,000 of them when they start arriving, then I'll get a bit more outraged.

That assumes that they get all the tests back. It is crazy to count tests not completed in the tests completed metric... but I guess I am not a spin doctor